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Monty Python vs. ShakespeareÆlflæd of Duckford

I fully joined the Society finally, after a few false starts, in 1977, about
the time "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" was released. It didn't come to
Española, but I saw it twice the week it was in Los Alamos. The second night
I took a tape recorder in so I could learn the songs and remember more lines
to tell my friends. When VCR rentals became available I made a sound tape of
the whole film. The year I got a VCR for Christmas it came with that one
real, store-bought tape.

Lines from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" are much a part of the vocabulary
of many people in the Society. "Run Away!" and "It's only a flesh wound"
fall trippingly from the tongues of many "silly English k-niggits."
My device has a duck because of a line from that movie. We were deciding
what animal was kind of funny and easy to draw, and someone standing off
to the side of the conversation said "a DUCK!" As though God or Graham
Chapman had spoken, a duck rampant became the charge.

There are people who are now the age I was then (chronologically or societally)
who can't quote any Monty Python sketches at all, and it hasn't seemed
to have hurt their ability to become medieval people with us. When they
look back to their early years in the Society they will remember quite
a different movie that touched them - Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V." That's
the tape they're playing on their way to events, those are the costumes
they're planning, the armor they want, and best of all, those are the
ideals they'll desire in themselves and respect in others.

Think of the effect on ceremonial language. Kings not yet chosen and
peers-to-be will have at hand phrases such as "tomorrow shall you know Our
mind at full" and "Not so, I do beseech your Majesty." "The gentler gamester
is the soonest winner" is so much more uplifting than "It's only a model."
"The fewer men the greater share of honor" and all the thoughts that go with
it were once reserved to English or theatre majors. Now the same guys who
might not have quoted anything better than RoboCop will be spouting
Shakespeare. God be praised!